


The vending machines are down the hall and to the right

by Rigil_Kentauris



Category: Alpha Protocol
Genre: Autumn, F/F, M/M, Office Shenanigans, One Shot Collection, miscellaneous prompts and aus
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-25
Updated: 2017-09-24
Packaged: 2018-08-17 07:01:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8134642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rigil_Kentauris/pseuds/Rigil_Kentauris
Summary: Spies have friends. Spies have more-than-friends. And sometimes, when they aren't busy saving the world from endless Halbech machinations, Alpha Protocol agents actually have time to spend with the people they care about.





	1. Office Supplies and Explosives [MT/SD]

**Author's Note:**

> Tags to be updated as I go along

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt [x](http://dailyau.tumblr.com/post/150138106307/youre-a-genius-and-i-am-anything-but-and-you) via [dailyau](http://dailyau.tumblr.com/) and [crypticasterisk](http://crypticasterisk.tumblr.com/)

Sean Darcy held up what looked like chunky paper clip that had been bent around a finger. Like what happens to a paper clip when you give it to someone who is feeling fidgety. Or someone who is trying to pay attention just enough to seem competent, but not enough to draw questions they could not possibly answer. In fact, the black metal twist in his stubby, surprisingly deft fingers looked identical to the mangled paperclip in my own. It wasn’t my fault he had a pile of them on his desk, scattered among papers and spare parts and pencil shavings. And he certainly wouldn’t miss it.

He twirled the metal thing through his fingers, like you would a pen, except the twisted piece was much shorter than a pen, and I was pretty sure any second now it was going to slip and fall.

I must have been staring at it pretty hard, because he stopped it mid-turn, and laughed. Then he stuck it on the flat of his thumb, flipped it in the air, caught it and slapped it on the back of his hand like a coin, holding both the curved metal and his hand up to my face for inspection.

“And _this_ is a Reinstahl trigger,” traces of his laughter still present despite the sudden challenge in his voice, “ _If_ you’ve been paying attention, you’ll know what it does. _And_ who invented it.”

“Ah…” I started. I _had_ been paying attention. Or what counted for paying attention when Sean Darcy got in one of his moods. The ones where, without prompting, he busted into your office, eyes alight, grabbed the back of your rolling chair and started pulling both it and you out the door with _no regards_ to the very full coffee mug in your hand. _“I gotta show you somethin’,”_ he’d said. _“And_ I _have to finish my mission report,”_ I’d said. _“Come on, Mikey,”_ he’d shot back, and fixed me with a stern glare. The full force of the steel part of the phrase ‘steel-blue eyes’.

_That_ kind of mood. The one where I knew I wasn’t going to get anything done today, not until I complied, at any rate. And besides. A good deal of his face, and most of the left side of his shirt was covering in what looked like soot, not to mention the jagged, scorched patches of blond hair. I’d made the mistake of reaching one hand up to try and pat out the burned spots, to make absolute sure they were out this time, and that was it. He’d intercepted my hand halfway to his forehead, yanked me out of the chair. I’d barely had enough time to leave my coffee cup behind.

So, yeah. I’d been _relatively_ paying attention. After the ninth identical twisted piece of metal, and dozens of attempts to follow along with things like _Colonel Hibbert’s 19 th century impact on modern found and insurgency Ellipsis practices_…

Well, the fun facts didn’t lose their interest entirely. It’s just that it was hard to focus on _the historically reciprocal relationship between finned grenades and the development of rocket flight_ when every time Sean Darcy started going off on a tangent, he’d start dashing around the room, grabbing various parts and skeletal prototypes off crowded surfaces, nodding or shaking his head so enthusiastically that charred, broken strands of his short hair would come free of the tangled mess, and then he’d reach up and brush his head off, not skipping a beat. Or even seeming bothered.

It’s that it was much harder to focus on the meaning of _counterproductive chronological release timers_ than it was to stare as he grabbed two entirely continuous circular springs, bent and slid them together, then clicked them into place. Voilà. They formed a flat, Venn diagram link. Except that the spring-circles concealed thin paper-like metal cores? I was lost. Nothing to do but smile, and nod, as he teased the cores out, snapped them into right angles, and began explaining _the modulation of the energy output coefficient_.

And it was much, much harder to focus on what he’d said on the walk over about Reinsta-whatsit when every time I smiled and nodded, he’d beam back, and toss me whichever trinket he’d been using to illustrate the concept, and I’d have to catch it, softly, and then try to clear some space for it without knocking anything on the floor.

And besides, I knew only three things about grenades. 1. They are noisy. 2. They are explosive. 3. Sean Darcy knew entirely too much about them.

“Well?” he prompted, pulling me out of my brief lapse in attention. He crossed his arms, Rein-something trigger disappearing into a fist.

I shut my mouth, and elected to smile and nod enthusiastically instead.

He frowned, and started studying me through narrowed eyes.

“Really?” he asked, suspiciously. I couldn’t blame him.

“Mmhm!” I flashed him my best, brightest smile. And, if his blue-gray eyes are designed for stares, glares, and flippant emphasis, mine own are best used for being disarming and sincere. Or so they tell me.

Unfortunately, I may have used this particular trick on him too many times.

“Right,” he said. He almost rolled his eyes – how important was this damn Rain-whatever?! – but he caught himself, and squeezed them shut them instead, shaking his head minutely. Then, of all things, turned his back to me, dropping the piece on his desk. It landed on a smallish pile of paperclips with a little click, accompanied by an equally small sigh from Sean.

_Shit_. Out of all those pieces, that one was apparently the important one. Great. I winced, hand tightening reflexively around the paperclip in my own hand.

Hm.

I moved over to where he’d flopped down in his chair. He idly shuffled various pins and scraps and slivers of blackened copper wires around the cluttered desk with one hand, leaving the other one free to be picked up. He ignored my efforts, pointedly scowling at the detritus on his desk with such intensity, I imagined for a second it would combust and burn the other side of his hair off. Then I got my mind back to that task at hand – wrapping his fingers around the paperclip without being distracted by the shocking number of tiny little cuts and scabs up and down his hand. I needed to get him another set of new gloves. Not that he ever used them.

I pushed the familiar sigh away – that was an issue for another time – and pulled his fist up and off the arm rest. He let me, looking up at me out of the corner of his eye only after I’d leaned over and lightly kissed his first knuckle.

“I _do_ know what it is. And I _do_ know who invented it,” I bluffed, and for extra emphasis, I pressed my lips to his hand again. He yanked it back, but not _too_ quickly. Then he extracted my paperclip from the center of his fist, eyes involuntarily sliding from it back to me every few seconds.

Finally, he lifted the other piece from the desk, scooted his chair around, and raised both eyebrows at me.

“Thorton,” he said, quietly, “do these really look anything alike to you?”

The quietness alarmed me. None of the boisterous enthusiasm of charging into my office. But also none of the moody dejection of all but a second ago. He was using my last name. He never calls me that. Hm. Well, when in doubt…

I smiled, and nodded.

He huffed again, but he didn’t flip back around to his desk, and, in fact…he was trying to glare at me, I could tell, but his lips were twitching, and the corners of his eyes were crinkly.

“That is the _last time_ ,” he began, still fighting to keep control of his annoyed grimace, “I share _any_ of my inventions with ya.”

Then he lost his battle, and the grin spread unchecked. “I mean,” he started, tossing the black twist of metal up and at my chest. I plucked it out of the air instinctively. “I change the course of remote explosives _forever_ , and _you_ think my pièce de résistance, maybe the most important thing I’ve ever made, looks like, what? A bent _paperclip_?”

I ran a finger along the back Rain trigger in my hand. Crap. Of course he’d invented the damn thing. I’d be on Wikipedia for hours tonight trying to figure out how it worked and what it did. Hours. If I was lucky.

“I _guess_ it could be worse,” he sighed dramatically. “But, now that we’ve covered the Reinstahl trigger, I can start explainin’ this thing.” He gently patted the massive hunk of cylindrical metal in the center of his desk, the thing he’d just had to show me, and yet, somehow, we’d spent half an hour talking about metal loops.

“You’re gonna love this,” he said, and then launched into an exposition on the _hydrodynamic versus hydrostatic efficiency component found in_ followed by four words I was absolutely certain weren’t English.

I slipped the Reinstahl trigger into my pocket. I would figure it out later. Right now, I had more smiling and nodding to do.


	2. Thursday Morning [MT]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bad dreams suck

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (sept '16) Tiny journal log from [_The Omega Report_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7504471/). Mikey is in Russia, and isn't doing too well.

Thursday Morning

_I had a dream yesterday that I was playing with my childhood dog, this big, fluffy, golden retriever mutt rescue dog Freddie, and we were playing fetch in the yard. Sean Darcy was there, but I don't know what he was doing, just petting the dog, I think. And the grass was green, and the dusk sky was purple, and the air was cool and thick with the sounds of grasshoppers and cicadas, and I ran my fingers through Freddie's tangled fur, and Sean ran his fingers through my bloody hair, and everything was-_

_Until I woke up, of course, and I remembered I never had a dog as a kid. Mom was allergic. And then when I moved out, by then it was too late, because I was an agent by then and I couldn't. I just couldn't. You know, going in, there will be a day when you won't come home...but I always wanted one._

 


	3. [SL/MnT] Photoshoots and Shots and Fall, and Falling, and then there's Running

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some people can go out to have a picnic and enjoy the sunset. And other people are Alpha Protocol agents and international assassins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> nov '16

The sinking autumn sun caught Scarlet’s hair up in a beam of honey light, the chill breeze twisting around stray strands and letting the glow disperse so that for one moment, Scarlet herself seemed like the sunset.

Mina wished she had Scarlet’s camera.

She leaned back on her elbows, feeling the dry grass crinkle a little under the picnic blanket, and watched Scarlet curl her gloved hands a little tighter around the chunky black device. She was perched on the slope of the hill, one foot resting on an exposed tree root, the other planted in the grass as she swept the camera lens across the vista below. A wild wide-open field and a distant troupe of crimson and goldenrod and mulberry trees, if there was anyone in the whole wide world who could capture the scene, it was Scarlet. The wind, lifting tree branches. The fading blue sky, pressing back. The leaves, spinning as warm currents pulled them up and bitter air forced them down – it would probably look better in print than it did right now. But, in Mina’s humble opinion, Scarlet had her camera facing the wrong way.

Mina rummaged around in her coat pocket for her cell phone. It was only four megapixels _(Only four?! Hmph. I know what you’re getting for Christmas this year)_ but it would do.

“Smile,” she called. Scarlet glanced back over her shoulder, eyes still tight with focus and concentration, and the wind picked that moment to kick up again, ruffling her hair and the corners of her black blazer, teasing the end of her brown and blue knit scarf back until it rested lightly on the waistband of her skinny jeans. Perfect.

_Click!_

“There.” Mina grinned, more than a little smug, she mentally admitted. Getting Scarlet on camera was pretty close to impossible. _Keeping_ her on camera…well, Mina had very nearly gotten away with it. Unfortunately, Scarlet bounded over, collapsed on the blanket beside her, and tugged Mina’s phone free before she had a change to properly stow it.

“Uh- _huh_ ,” Scarlet chided, stopped by the lock screen for a grand total of three seconds. Why had Mina given her the unlock code, again? “Not with this camera, you don’t.”

“Oh,” she added, a moment later, and flopped back on the ground, her hair tumbling beyond the blanket and tangling up with grass and an errant acorn. “Not bad.”

“I may have picked up a thing or two.”

Scarlet tilted her head over. “Keep it up, and I might be out of a job.”

“I doubt it.”

They lay silent for a moment, while the sun melted a little more in the sky. Eventually, Scarlet started inching her fingers across the small space between them, like a caterpillar, until she reached Mina’s hand, and deposited the phone back where it belonged. The little nagging guilt-filled doubt that sprung up whenever Scarlet got to talking about jobs didn’t stop Mina from dropping the phone. It didn’t stop her from grabbing Scarlet’s hand, instead. And it didn’t stop her from working the warm glove off, so she could feel Scarlet’s smooth skin under her fingertips.

“So…” Mina started, shivering a bit in the cold air, “did you take the shot?”

“What?” A note of alarm, incongruous with the peaceful rustling around them. Mina scooted closer.

“The ‘sweeping onset of the golden hour’ that was so important, we _had_ to come all the way out here, and we _had_ to stay an extra hour so you could document it?”

“Oh.” She squeezed Mina’s hand tightly. “Yeah. Yeah, I got it.”

“Well then. I showed you mine…” It was only fair. Mina rolled over on her side, looped a finger around the strap of the camera.

Scarlet’s smile had a definite melancholy flare to it, Mina decided. Or maybe she was overthinking it. Maybe the absence of wrinkles in the corner of her eyes was nothing. Maybe Mina’d spent too much time on missions, guiding field agents, listening, trying to make decisions where the difference between _‘I’m fine’_ and _‘I’m fine’_ was only one note up on the scale, but was life or death all the same.

Maybe it was nothing. It was nothing.

Then Scarlet reached over and pulled Mina closer, avoiding her eyes but not letting go.

“Scarlet – what’s wrong?” Mina asked, the way her cheek was smooshed up against Scarlet’s coat making it somewhat hard to talk. Mina could feel Scarlet’s steady breathing. She could also feel her rapid heartbeat, which meant something was _most definitely_ wrong.

Scarlet breath gathered up, and she sighed, all at once. “You ever…” she started, and let her voice fade away into the quiet noises of leaves and a distant plane overhead.

Mina let her think, but couldn’t stop herself from tensing, instantly, because she recognized that tone of voice.

It came after missions, usually, the days after when everything was done, the data secured, or the building swept, or the target down, it came hand-in-hand with doubt, and weariness, usually. And awkwardness. The small thought that maybe it didn’t matter, I could have done something different, why did they have to die. The words were always different. She’d heard them enough to know that.

But the regret was always the same.

And she was trained to handle that, of course, that was her job, but…but that kind of tired regret, she recognized _because_ she was an agent. Because that level of worn down aching didn’t come from civilians, didn’t come from picnics and fall leaves, didn’t come from taking pictures. It came from taking lives. From being under immense pressure, and stress, and she was trained to handle that, but not here. She recognized Scarlet’s tone, but she didn’t know what to do except what she her training told her to do. Wait and listen, with sinking ugly painful feeling, because she had no idea _whatsoever_ where this was coming from, or who had caused it.

“Do you ever…” Scarlet started again. It hurt even more to hear it, now that Mina knew what to listen for. It hurt, too, because Mina could think of only two sources in Scarlet’s life that might have brought it about. Her photojournalism, which she loved. And…

Well, Mina was still an agent. And she’d done her _damndest_ to make sure that never, ever, _ever_ , bled over, but…but here they were, Scarlet starting to shiver under her, except her blazer was, for some reason, even better at keeping out the chill than Mina’s, she knew, she loved stealing it.

“Do you ever wanna do something different with your life?” Scarlet finally finished, looking up at the tree branches.

“Do you mean a career change? But-”

“Yeah, no, I mean…just different. Everything.”

The relief was as cold as the air. So it _was_ just work.

Then again…how bad were things?

“I can’t imagine what it’s like, doing what you have to do for some of those stories. That piece on the refugees-”

“That’s not what I mean,” she said, voice rising along with her heartbeat. “I _like_ photography, I _like_ going out there, but I don’t…”

Scarlet sighed again, and Mina felt a hand running through her ponytail.

“I was thinking about maybe setting up a studio stateside. Being around more often.”

“That…” Would be a terrible idea. Would mean lies, and confusion, and ‘yes I have another work trip this week be back in a month’.  Would be worlds colliding in the worst of ways. Mina couldn’t force herself to talk, and Scarlet’s hand paused in her hair before resuming, a second later, along with stilted words.

“I really like you, Mina. And I don’t-” Her fingers got caught in a snarl, and she took the time to work it out gently before resuming- “I don’t want my work to get in the way.”

“It’s not in the way.” Mina responded, automatically. Technically true. It wasn’t in the way. It wasn’t as if Mina could sit down and talk about her day job working for a super-secret intelligence agency, and then her weekend gig working for an even more hush-hush agency designed to infiltrate ones like the other. On rare occasions, the configuration confused her herself. No, Scarlet could never know that and so, her photojournalism was not in the way. It was the only reason this worked, right now. Mina was a little surprised to realize that her own heart rate wasn’t quite steady anymore.

“Oh,” said Scarlet.

Dark blue stains began spreading at the corners of the horizon, tainting the sunset, making it look all the more like fire.

And then water and fire, coming together and mingling in a purple line.

And then just water, consuming the last remaining vestiges of evening.

Listening to their pulses colliding arhythmically was getting to be too much, so Mina rolled back off to the side, trapping Scarlet’s hand under her hair. They sat, and Mina couldn’t think of anything to say, any way to follow up that small ‘oh’, so they sat and sat and sat and watched the stars come out, until Mina’s shiver got so bad she couldn’t hide it anymore.

Scarlet sat up, freeing her hand, brushing leaves and twigs out of her own hair and giving up halfway through. “We should go-”

“I _have_ thought about doing something different,” Mina interrupted, trying to arrest the hand going for the corner of the blanket with her voice alone. “I have. Sat around at the office and wondered if this isn’t the way I want my life to go.”

She hesitated, not sure where she was going with this, but sure that the slight tilt to Scarlet’s head, ears angled towards Mina, meant that Scarlet was listening, even if her eyes were wandering through the sky. “I…

“I know a corporate desk job is less impactful than journalism-” Small lie, small lie, she was vital and every day she came in the world ended up a little better, and she knew it, it was hell to know that, sometimes- “but whenever I start feeling that kind of regret, I remind myself that I’m making a difference. That what I’m doing is valuable. That it’s important.”

This was getting away from her, but Scarlet was motionless, frozen, hand stuck above the blanket, and that had to mean something, so she kept going.

“I think…” What _had_ she been trying to say? That all the pressure, all the mind-numbing don’t-think-about-it daily life-or-death decisions were _worth_ it? Was she really, honestly trying to sell that? She knew she _could_ ; she sold her agents on it every day, it was a necessity, you had to believe that or else…the ‘else’ didn’t beg thinking about.

“I think if you wanted to start a studio,” she said, carefully, because the answer she was getting at was developing, growing, fragile and she wasn’t sure she could get it out before she lost hold of it. “that would be great. But, Scarlet, if you were only doing it to get away from something…”

_That_ was it. She smiled, the contradictions, the need to suppress the ‘or else’ all falling away.

“Don’t run away _from_ something,” she summed up. “Run _to_ something. Does that make sense?”

Scarlet didn’t say anything for several heartbeats, and Mina stifled the sick bitter feeling tapping impatiently at the base of her spine.

“Yes,” Scarlet finally allowed. Funny, Mina didn’t recall starting to hold her breath. “Yes, it does.”

“Good. It should. I worked hard on that one.” It got a tiny laugh out of Scarlet, light and clear in through the dark air. “So…studio?”

“I don’t know,” Scarlet answered. “I have to think about it.”

“Let me know when you figure it out.”

“You’ll be the first to know,” Scarlet said, standing up, locking her fingers behind her and stretching her arms above her head. Her eyes, focused intently on the stars above the distant treeline. Her stretching tugged at her blazer, exposing the wrinkled t-shirt underneath. Her scarf falling over her raised shoulder, tracing lightly the gentle curve of her waist. Camera strap pressed against her hair right below a crumpled-up leaf, the trembling energy traveling up and down her arms making the leaf shake a little. Scarlet swiveled her head around, and met Mina’s smile with one of her own, lines in the corner of her eyes, and moonlight in the center. Scarlet stuck out a hand.

“I think I took the wrong picture,” Main said, before she could stop herself.

Scarlet raised a single eyebrow. “So you _haven’t_ learned all my tricks. Good to know.”

Mina took Scarlet’s offered hand, let herself be helped up, let herself be pulled into Scarlet’s embrace. The leaf was still in her hair. It only took Mina a second to dislodge it.

“Hey,” Scarlet said softly, and nudged Mina back a little, until they had just enough room to look at each other face to face. “Thanks.”

It could have been the cold causing the reddish tinge to Scarlet’s cheeks. Mina preferred to think otherwise. “Don’t mention it.”

“If you insist,” she said, drawing Mina closer with every word, until their lips met for a brief, small moment. And for that brief, small moment, when Scarlet’s lips were warm, and her arms were warm, and Mina’s skin was entirely too warm, she completely forgot what it was she was supposed to be insisting on. Something.

“Let’s go home before we freeze,” Scarlet said under her breath, as soon as they pulled apart.

And, even though there was hardly any danger of freezing– she had half a mind to ditch her coat as it was – it was probably the best plan Mina had heard all week.

Well…she’d help save a national economy on Tuesday, so maybe not all week. But it was absolutely, beyond a doubt her favorite. And right now, with Scarlet’s fingers resting on the back pockets of her jeans – right now, she was happy with that.


	4. [MT/SD] One Burnt Turkey Later...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (nov '16) Thanksgiving prompt adapted [via this lovely post](http://nadiahilker.tumblr.com/post/133627477715/im-always-a-slut-for-a-christmas-au-i-know-we): “hi we’re neighbours and omg are you alright i could smell ~~cooking~~ burning - whoaaa now that’s just embarrassing? step aside i’ll handle this”

The oven coughed up smoke, the sprinkler shone menacingly in the fluorescent kitchen light, and the noise from the fire alarm tried its best to poke holes in Michael’s eardrums. He backed slowly out of the kitchen door, nearly fell backwards over the sofa, but there was an idea, yeah? He grabbed a pillow, began waving it at the alarm on the ceiling, which, despite how well it seemed to work for everyone else, did absolutely nothing.

But that was fine. Michael had everything under control.

“ _I have everything under control_ ,” he whispered under his breath, and then a loud POP! noise joined the blaring alarm, and a small flickering glow shined through the oven window. Michael scrambled around the sofa, looking around the living room and patting his pockets down and searching the cushions for a cell phone that wasn’t there and he got a bad feeling, a really terrible gnawing feeling in his stomach, that he just might be about to burn the apartment building down.

 

* * *

 

Sean knew the smell of smoke by heart. He loved it, in fact. Bitter, acrid stuff, felt like home on the grenade practice range, or out target shooting with the Whitworth, or even laundry day. Smoke damage had ruined far too many shirts by now.

So, the first hint of smoke creeping into his apartment hadn’t distracted him, at first. He’d been working hard, engaged in what he promised himself would be the last edit war of the month, and the smell had only made him smile, almost unconsciously.

It took approximately four second for the feeling of alarm to catch up, for him to snap back into a state of alertness, for him to shove his keyboard off his lap and onto the couch, to scan the living room for the source of the disturbance. He didn’t see anything, but he knew fire, and that didn’t mean-

Then the wild cursing kicked in, coming from downstairs, along with a piercing alarm he could hear even through the floor, and things started making sense.

 

* * *

 

Flames ate at the pillow. He shouldn’t have thrown it. He’d panicked. His landlord was going to kill him. The fire was going to kill him. Smoke covered the kitchen ceiling; Michael could barely see the alarm through the grey haze. His eyes stung even trying to look. Weren’t the sprinklers supposed to do something?

He swiped his hands in between the couch cushions one last time before he gave up and started retreating for the door. He kept his watering eyes trained on the now-angry orange light in the oven, stumbling over a shoe as he watched the brown pillow burning. His hand reached the front door, he shoved it open, and he tumbled out directly into the path of a tall blond guy in suspenders, swinging a small fire extinguisher and stopping mid-step to stare at Michael, eyebrows high. Michael recognized him. The neighbor with the deep grey-blue eyes and the shoulders that rolled when he walked and the semi-permanent smirk that had only disappeared once, when the man had stopped to help a passer-by pick up cans of green beans after their grocery bag had split and dumped food all over the sidewalk. Michael tried to catch his balance, knew he was going to fail and probably fall, so he opted instead to angle for the wall. He hit it, crossed his arms across his chest and leaned into the wall like he’d meant to do that, of course.

“‘Sup,” he tried to say, but the smoke was still there in his throat itching and scratching and his words came out more as a series of short coughs, punctuated by a tear from his irritated eyes. Great.

“Welcome to the neighborhood,” the man said calmly, slinging the extinguisher up on his shoulder, still staring at Michael. “I’m Sean Darcy. You okay?”

Talking was probably a bad idea. Michael nodded instead, gave Sean Darcy a thumbs up, couldn’t meet the eyes that were very clearly traveling all the way down and then back up his body without breaking out into another coughing fit, so he made the mistake of looking back through his front door, towards his kitchen. His nods became vehement nos.

Sean followed his gaze. “What were you doin’, tryin’ to cook – whoaaaa-kay.”

Sean stuck his head around the door and was met with the source of the problem. Looked like the guy had set his entire freakin’ oven on fire. Cloudy smoke spewed from the hinges on the door and the cooktop. For some reason, there was a sofa cushion resting on top of the mess. It sent tongues of flame up to brush the ceiling.

“I was practicing for Thanksgiving,” Hotshot managed in a hoarse whisper.

“Now, that’s just embarrassing,” Sean said, and glanced backwards.

The guy still had his arms crossed over his chest, but it looked defensive now. The grumpy lines on his forehead didn’t help. Neither did the flashing in his vibrant green eyes. The tears in the corners kind of took the effect away, especially because Sean could practically see the firelight sparkling in them. The eyes centered on his own, but he couldn’t stop studying them. Had to be contacts. _Had_ to be. Eyes did not come in that color, grass green, highlighter green surrounding two large pupils. The color was pissing him off and he didn’t know why.

Then Hotshot’s eyes widened slightly, and his focus shifted past Sean. He spun around to see flames singing the corner of a white wooden cabinet. Right, apartment burning down.

Sean sighed.

“Step aside, hotshot” he said theatrically, and swept the fire extinguisher around. “I got this.”

“I’m _Michael_ ,” he protested, through a stifled cough.

“ _You_ ,” Sean said without looking back, “are havin’ Thanksgiving upstairs this year.”

With that mentally settled, he stepped through the front door and inhaled the rough scent of fire gone wrong.


	5. [MT/SD] This is for your own good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (march '17) I was watching netflix and I got really upset about the thing characters do? The whole saying mean things to make people that they love go away when said people are in terrible danger thing? Yeah that. And apparently what I do about this is go make my characters do the thing. I'm sure this trope has a name but I can't recall.

    “You’re not a bad agent, Mikey,” he broke in sharply. “But look at your track record.”

    Michael paused mid-word, eyes flashing, hands balled up, the anger bringing a warm red tint to the amber-brown of his skin. Sean counted examples off on his fingers, and watched him shift from anger to disbelief, shaking with the impact of each incident, the motion slight, suppressed.

    “There was Barcelona, Leipzig, then there was Operation Inkblot…”

    “I mean,” he continued, “go back far enough and there’s the whole Alpha Protocol thing.”

    This time the tremor running through Michael was easily visible, unsuppressible. He blinked a little, vibrant green eyes fixed on Sean’s.

    Sean didn’t look away. He could manage that, for Mike.

    “Taipei,” he said. “The embassy in Moscow…”

     _Saint James,_ he almost didn’t add, but Michael needed to leave, Sean needed him to get out while he still could and if that meant crossing lines, well, he’d once claimed he’d do anything for Michael.

    “Madison,” he said quietly.

     _“That wasn’t my fault,”_ Michael whispered back, barely breathing.

    “Yeah it was,” Sean said.

     _“I didn’t…I never meant…it wasn’t…”_ Michael choked out, tension running through his raised shoulders. Sean’d given a world and a half to reach out and smooth them back down, knead away the anger and the frustration and apologize and make it all better. Maybe, if they were lucky, one day it would be. Maybe one day he’d wake up next to Michael and never have to worry about losing him again. Maybe one day Thorton would forgive him.

    Michael shook the tensions out, shook his head, looked back up at Sean. He took a few deep breaths, steadying himself. Sean recognized the series of emotions, recognized the forced return of his regular poise, resting evenly on his feet and letting his abdomen carry most his weight, making his shoulders fall back just enough so he could trick himself into thinking he was fine again, reshuffling his face until his expression landed on something that was both alertly analytical and disinterested at the same time, his hard green eyes vaguely passing over the room but always somehow connecting with the exits, cover, possible places for weapons to be stashed. Agent mode. Sean recognized it from seeing Michael in action. He hadn’t been on the receiving end of it in years.

    Sean recognized, too, the way Mike caught himself doing it. Caught himself doing it, and then willed it away, broke down his own defenses and crossed the room swiftly to pull Sean into his arms-

    Sean had known this was going to be difficult. He’d hoped Madison would have been the end of it. But even people Mike didn’t know he trusted too deeply, too easily. With Sean…

    He let Michael hug him. It wasn’t the heat, Sean told himself. Or the last few moments of security. Or the knowledge that this was as close as Sean would ever be to Michael’s heartbeat ever again.

    It wasn't because, he tried to convince himself, he didn't want to watch Michael react to what he was about to do.

    “Last week,” Sean started.

    Michael didn’t go still. He only pulled Sean in tighter, elbows notching around his side, head nesting on Sean’s shoulder. His breathing quickened.

     _Please don’t,_ he was saying, and Sean knew it.

    “That little girl,” Sean continued, and Michael’s quick breaths grew shallow.

    The kicker was, it really hadn’t been Michael’s fault. But Sean couldn’t show him those reports. If he knew, he’d stay, and then they’d turn him over to the CIA and let him be summarily tortured and broken and executed as a traitor. No statute of limitations on betrayal.

    But that wasn't important anymore. He had a job to do.

    “That little girl,” he said, “She didn’t have to die. But _you_ took the shot. That’s on _you_. _You_ didn’t do your research, and now she’s dead and buried in some unmarked grave somewhere. Or did you even bother with that?”

    He had. Sean knew it. He’d seen the images – Michael cradling the body and sobbing in the dirt, the explosives still strapped around the girl’s waist and absorbing the evening sunlight. The small mound of dirt in the forest and the crooked sapling on top, another sprout in a clay pot left in front of an unmarked wooden door in the city. The video footage of Thorton’s debriefing and medical reports from Agent Hartford’s subsequent trip to the hospital.

    “It’s like I said – you’re not a _bad_ agent…but…”

    He let the word dangle. Felt wet drops on the back of his shirt and realized Michael was crying silently.

    “I’m sorry,” he said, because he couldn’t stop himself.

    “I’m sorry,” he repeated, because he _had_ to stop himself, “but you’re a liability. You’re dangerous. You’re sloppy, you’re lazy, impulsive-”

     _Meticulous, resilient, and yeah, impulsive, but-_

    He couldn’t take a deep breath without Michael feeling it, and he couldn’t finish things like this, so he unpried Michael’s arms and gently pushed him back. The last second of warmth and connection and the fact that Michael even _wanted_ to hold him gone in an instant. And breathing wasn’t any easier with him gone now, Sean’s throat was tight and tears were running down Michael’s face and getting caught in rough stubble. Sean hadn’t slept the night before, either.

    “I lo-” he said, tongue getting caught on it even now, even on his last chance to say it. It didn’t matter. “I care about you. You know that.”

    Michael nodded slowly, and Sean felt slightly sick at the sight. Saliva pooling behind his teeth like he was about to throw up, and it was really going to be better to get it all over with, wasn’t it? To let him go? He’d said he’d do anything.

     _I’m sorry_ , he thought, one last time, and then he pulled on his own agent persona, smiled at Thorton with half of his mouth, spread his arms and made loose, casual gestures.

    “I didn’t stick up for you yesterday because I agree with Hartford. You don’t deserve to be here. Ya don’t deserve to be here, and I’m supportin’ your resignation.”

    Michael didn’t argue it. Michael didn’t do anything. Michael wouldn’t even look at him.

    “And lemme be clear,” he added. “I’m gonna be workin’ with ‘em to make sure you _do_ go. Because you’re an embarrassment to this agency, and I’m not gonna let you hurt anyone else.”

    The tears were slower, now. “But I love you,” Michael said, sounding confused and far away and very small.

    “I know. Why do you think I get the lovely job of talkin’ to ya? You lo-” he tripped up, cursed mentally but kept going- “I’m the reason you’re still stayin', so now I gotta lose my whole evening making sure you know we don’t want ya here anymore. Thanks for that, by the way. I had plans.”

    “But-”

    “No more buts, Mikey. You gotta own up to what ya did. I called security. They’re coming to escort you, and you’re gonna go with them, and you’re not gonna come back.”

    Some part of Sean was hurting. Michael was beyond the tears now, all wide-eyed shock and pain, and breaths so light Sean couldn’t hear them at all. He could barely make out the motion of Michael’s chest going in and out. And some part of Sean was hurting with that fact, but training was setting in. The motions of being Agent Darcy were locking into place. It was getting easier to look at him coldly, like a particularly difficult asset who needed to be moved out of the line of fire and not like the man who would put the A/C on in the middle of winter, heap extra blankets on the bed, and would stay buried underneath them until ten in the morning, unless it had snowed during the night, he had a northerner's supernatural sense about snow, although he claimed that was the gunshot wound in his leg-

    Sean’s breath caught in his throat. He could still take it all back. It wasn’t too late. The files existed and Mike would understand and it could all go back to normal, at least for one night-

    He pushed Agent Thorton aside, moved past him. Reached the door, yanked it open, and waved at the security officers outside.

    They wouldn’t just kill him. They’d brand him a traitor. They’d take everything he’d ever believed away from him, and if it was the first time, things might have been different, but he knew, he _knew_ Michael could not go through that a second time. He couldn’t survive another Alpha Protocol. He couldn’t even survive Sean.

    The three security officers piled in, cold blue uniforms matching focused, neutral stares. One rested a hand on her holstered Taser.

    The other two officers fastened their grip on Michael’s upper arms, and he didn’t resist.

    “Don’t bother tryin’ to get back in the game,” he said, stepping over and lifting Michael’s chin so their eyes met briefly, and even the agent part of him was having trouble resisting the urge to run his fingers over Mike’s jawline, to climb up the back of his neck and fluff his hair.

    “Why?” Michael asked, voice rough, and breaking on the one lone word.

    Sean knew what he was asking about. But Thorton couldn’t come back. Sean knew what he was asking about but he pretended he didn’t because Thorton could _never_ come back.

    “Don’t bother tryin’ to get back in, because I lied.”

    The tiniest bit of hope sparking in his eyes, and he couldn’t do it, he couldn’t, anything less and Michael might come back one day but Sean couldn’t. So, he let Agent Darcy do it instead. Smiled, just on the border of a smirk, patted Agent Thorton’s head and nodded at the security agents.

    “I lied, Mikey,” he lied. “You _are_ a bad agent. And we both know it. I don’t know why we’ve put up with it for so long, but that ends today.”

    And he knew what he’d find happening in Thorton’s eyes if he looked. And he knew if he looked that would be the image he fell asleep and woke up picturing for weeks, months, maybe even years alone in his empty room.

    He couldn’t do it. Not even for Thorton he couldn’t, he’d said he’d do anything but he felt sick and Agent Darcy didn’t need to pay attention to the figure anyway, he was done for.

    He focused on security instead.

    “Try and play nice,” he advised one of the men holding on to an arm. “He is my friend, after all.”

    The man nodded curtly. The two started walking him out, and when he went limp in their arms, breathing ragged and uneven, they dragged him.


	6. [MT/SD] Sir Thorton (Almost Doesn't) Rescue a Prince

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> sept '17. prompt: [_You wanted to save a princess and that's chill but I'm a prince so can you stop cursing in (insert language here) and save me_](http://otp-imagines-cult.tumblr.com/post/160483498218/you-wanted-to-save-a-princess-and-thats-chill-but)  
>  michael/sean

The knight stumbles up the stairs and collapses at the landing, yanking his helmet off and tossing it across the floor with a quiet _fuck off._ He’s breathing hard, the dragon’s blood coating his sword and covering his armor explanation enough. He lays there panting at the ceiling with his eyes closed for a few moments, then he rolls over and pushes himself to his knees and starts shouting down the stairs. He makes it through about ever curse word you know, but _apparently_ that doesn’t satisfy him, so he starts cursing in several foreign languages, rough ones, smooth ones, melodious ones that only seemed harsh once he flips the stairs off.

“Fuck of a lot of stairs,” he grumbles at them.

“And fuck you too!” he shouts down the stairwell.

He seems to notice you for the first time, perched carefully in the tower’s single window, raising an eyebrow at him.

“The dragon,” he says, gesturing with his sword downstairs. “I…never mind. Uh…”

He fumbles with a pouch belted around his armor, sneaking quick glances back over at you every few seconds. You give him nothing but an arch shrug.

Finally, he finds a small, tattered scroll.

“I’m supposed…” he says, squinting at it. “I’m here to save a princess?”

He looks at you, and then at the small tower room. It very obviously does not have any one else in it.

“No princess here,” you say, wondering when he’s going to notice the diadem tangled up in your hair.

“God in the fuck _damn,”_ he says, resigned, crumbling the paper up and stuffing it back into his pouch.

“The king is an ass,” he adds.

“Mm,” you agree, stretching back so the sunlight catches on the gold metal of your diadem.

He doesn’t notice. Or he’s ignoring you. Intolerable, either way.

“Well,” he says, shifting from foot to foot. “So, you live around here, then?”

You sigh, and hop down from the window ledge. You trot across your room and pick his helmet up.

“Yeah, you could say that,” you say, handing it over and making damn sure you run your fingers through your hair, playing with your diadem.

“Fuck,” he says, missing the point entirely, catching sight of the blood splattered on his cheekbones in the reflection of his helmet. “Goddamn dragon.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Well, uh…” he says, tucking the helmet under one arm. “I should probably get going. Before the dragon recovers, and everything. Do you, uh…need anything, or something? Before I take off?”

You stare at him with your best _are you serious._

“So…no?” he guesses.

Fine. You gotta do this the hard way.

“As a matter of fact, yeah,” you say, crossing your arms. “Two things. First, cut it out with the cursing. Two…”

You point deliberately at the well-wrought, elaborate, sapphire-studded hunk of metal on your head.

His pretty eyes widen with surprise.

“Right!” he says. “Sorry. The message got a bit torn up, I-”

“Listen,” you say, taking the damn thing off and twirling it around your finger. “You wanted to go save some _princess,_ that’s fine by me. Unfortunately for you, ya got me.

“So, _please,”_ you add, dragging the word out so he can’t detect the buried concern at being left behind, “can we skip to the ‘rescuing me’ part of this operation, ASAP? ‘Cause that dragon’s no joke.”

“Right,” he says again, nodding. “Of course, m’lord.”

You roll your eyes as hard as you can without hurting yourself.

“Ya walked into my tower cursing at everything, and _now_ you wanna go formal on me?”

“I’ve got some catching up to do.”

“No fucking way,” you say, and he grins. “My name’ll do fine. Shall we?”

You gesture at the fuck lot of stairs, and he grimaces.

“Could be worse,” you say. “I could make you carry me.”

“Hell no,” he swears, forcing his helmet back on and snapping the buckles into place.

“What, you’re supposed to be saving me.”

“I though we weren’t going formal?”

“Eh,” you say. “We’ll see.”

“Alright, then,” he says. And you can’t see the smile though his visor, but you can hear it. “Let’s go.”


End file.
